


Presence and Absence

by Princess of Geeks (Princess)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s07e01 Fallen & Episode: s07e02 Homecoming, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 02:36:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2675756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene from Season 7's Homecoming. Daniel is trying to come to grips with his memory loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Presence and Absence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JD Junkie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=JD+Junkie).



"Hi," Daniel said, poking his head in the door of her lab, strangely hesitant. His body followed, but he just stood there, nervously flicking the corner of the file he held.

Probably a mission file, Sam realized, with a glance at the familiar cover -- the letters too small to read at this distance, but the layout, the typeface, the diagonal red slash of the CLASSIFIED stamp.... If Daniel was still holed up in that VIP room of his, reading case files? She sighed.

"Daniel," she said, putting as much cheerfulness in her voice as she could, "please! Come in!"

"I just. I was up, and ..."

"I know it's late," Sam said conspiratorially. She was standing, a hand outstretched toward a stool. "I'm always up late, working on whatever unfinished project seems to have gotten to the top of the list. There's no shortage of those."

"Yes," Daniel said, abstracted, looking around her lab as if it were all brand new to him. Which in actual fact, it was. Sam looked down and threaded her fingers together in front of her, a sharp pang in her chest. It really was literally all new to him. Poor guy.

She'd been drinking tea; raspberry, tonight -- tea meant socializing. It meant welcome. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

Could tea be a start, maybe, at rebuilding their friendship? The fact that rebuilding was now necessary just killed her. They'd never had to stand on ceremony, ever. From that very first day, the day she'd walked through the stargate into an adventure beyond imagining, walked through onto the surface of his adopted home, that day when he'd babbled so enthusiastically to her about the Abydos cartouche, they'd been able to just dive right in. Been able to talk about the work, about whatever amazing project was right in front of them. They'd never lost their shared wonder and enthusiasm for all the incredible discoveries the universe had presented them.

Until Kelowna. And now their Daniel was back, but, it wasn't the same. Now, it was awkward. He didn't know her, and she didn't know him.

"Tea," he said, sounding uncertain.

She was already at the hot water kettle and the lab sink at the far wall, already refilling and then plugging in the kettle. She had a couple of clean cups, thank God.

"You were always more of a coffee drinker, like the colonel," she said, over her shoulder, hands busy. "But I have some real tea here -- Darjeeling, I think. You never really liked the herbal stuff I drink."

Teabag waiting in a clean cup, kettle heating. She turned, folding her arms, and walked back to her seat. The stainless steel table separated them. He was sitting, looking down, again or still, his hand relentlessly busy on the file's edges.

"Darjeeling," he said. "I should know what that means, I should, but I...." He looked up then, and laid his palm flat on the file. "This is the report on the mission your team made to Abydos, when I --" his glance cut away on the pronoun, as if disavowing it, somehow -- "helped you. Helped you find the Eye of Ra."

His pronouncing of the name of the artifact was stilted, as if he didn't quite believe in it.

"Yes?" She urged him to say more, but her gut was slowly clenching.

The last trip through the gate to Abydos, the one after the mission he had just read about, was something she would have preferred to forget. She knew that the colonel and Teal'c felt the same; could see it in their eyes, during that horrendous briefing with the general when O'Neill had faltered, talking about the soccer ball, and Teal'c had taken up the thread of the report, firm and merciless. She'd exchanged one sad glance with Jonas, then fixed her gaze on the surface of the table and waited them out, grateful that there wasn't much of anything for the science department to explain, on this one. The general had asked her for her theory about how they had come to be on Abydos again at all, in the aftermath of Anubis' cataclysmic attack, and she had mumbled something about quantum uncertainty and the power of the Ancients, until Hammond had, in his mercy, thanked her and let them all go. She and O'Neill had shared one poignant glance, in the doorway, and he had let her go as well.

Not something she cared to relive.

But this was Daniel. He deserved whatever of her knowledge he wanted. She owed him that. And so much more.

He was talking. "It's so hard for me to believe, you know. That I had those powers, that I was an Ascended Being." Certain words, he spit out in this stilted, technical way, as if he understood their import but needed to distance himself.

"I'm sorry, Daniel. About Abydos," she blurted. It had been almost too much to take in, too much to understand, that Anubis had destroyed an entire inhabited planet, and that Oma had managed to make sure every single person living on that planet had ascended. She'd seen Ska'ara with her own eyes, afterward, seen how he'd talked to Jack, and the whole thing still made her a little sick.

But Daniel. Those had been Daniel's people. That had been Daniel's home. Unlike her, he had to think about it, whether he wanted to or not. He, she was sure, felt responsible. That had always been his burden. He met her eyes, across the table, that intense blue. She unfolded her hands, let them rest flat on the table, and held his gaze without flinching.

He said, "Oma. This person, this being, that was in charge of me when I died. She did the same thing -- the same... ascension... for the entire population of the planet."

Sam nodded, forcing herself not to look away. "We think it must have amounted to over five thousand people. You never gave us a firm estimate of the population. The number we use was mostly based on what the colonel saw on the first mission. We did go back there, a couple of times, since your first trip through the stargate, but we never really had a census."

"Oma did that. Cheating death. For thousands...." Daniel trailed off.

"Daniel," Sam began, leaning toward him, fumbling for reassurance. She didn't have enough facts, but she knew him. She knew; she felt, what Oma had done for those people out of concern, she suspected, for Daniel. Lord knew the Ancients had stood by often enough, and watched entire civilizations die. What was different this time? Daniel. She swallowed. "Oma had that kind of power. We're certain all the remaining residents of Abydos aren't dead. They are in a kind of energy state, like we saw Oma, and her monk, and earlier, that we saw Orlin, inhabit. We don't pretend to fully understand it, but it's clear they're not dead."

"Dead. Ascended." Daniel ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated. "Don't you see that I haven't the slightest way of understanding what either of those concepts mean? I know, I have, I'm getting back a theoretical understanding of the beliefs regarding the afterlife of a dozen cultures, Earthside and of other planets, but..." he made a futile gesture, like grasping at something out of reach, and then looked back at the file, tapping it. "It happened to me too, you all say. But I have no way of understanding."

She drew breath. How to explain this, when she didn't understand it either? "I know it's hard to accept. There are so many things I'm confronted with every day that I basically do not understand. Believe me, I share your frustration. But I saw the kind of power Oma Desala has. I believe the people of Abydos aren't dead. Where they are, exactly, I don't know. But they are somewhere. I don't know if they are where you were. But obviously you weren't dead either."

She got up and went to check on the kettle. It was boiling, but she'd timed it just right and beaten the whistle. She poured his tea. Before, he had taken it plain, not doctored up with sugar or cream. But now, maybe he needed the fortification of English-style tea. She found the sugar. Found the quart of milk in the little fridge. Siler kept it stocked. It was touching. She tried not to think about that either. She fiddled with the teabag, buying time. She'd serve it with milk and sugar, now. Hoping it would be all right.

"You 'believe'..." Daniel said.

"Yeah, hilarious, right?" She brought the mug and stood beside him after she'd placed it before him, next to the frayed folder. He'd really been worrying its edges. "Me, a scientist, talking about belief."

"Like I said," a familiar voice came from behind them. "That was always your department."

Daniel turned, and seemed to have to think. "Jack," he said.

"That's me."

The colonel's arms were folded, and he looked wary and yet receptive. Sam could only guess how much getting this Daniel back had upset him. They had been so close, before. To lose him had gutted all three of them -- but the colonel had grieved most of all. That was clear. She and Teal'c had talked about it; talked about how to prevent O'Neill from taking his anger at Daniel's loss out on Jonas, who didn't really deserve what O'Neill had wanted to pin on him.

O'Neill's grief was larger than what the Kelownans had done. Larger than the space Jonas tried so hard to fill. Teal'c had understood. He had helped her in trying to allow Jonas to fit in, even when the colonel could not.

Sam offered, "We were just talking about the Abydos mission, sir. When we went to try to retrieve the Eye of Ra."

"Ah, yes." Jack sauntered in, his careless demeanor a ploy. Sam felt herself stiffening and braced against it. It wasn't like him to be on base this late, but getting Daniel back had upset everyone's routine. The colonel in particular had been acting so weird ever since Daniel had been found on Vis Uban.... Happy and moody and angry by turns. She thought she understood why, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with.

Daniel was staring into his teacup, then taking a cautious sip.

"It's what we call English tea," Sam said, finding herself veering toward trivialities. "Tea with milk and sugar. It's practically a snack in itself."

"It's good," Daniel said. "Thank you."

Relief out of all proportion to the situation flooded her. "I always liked herbal tea myself, but the real stuff is good too," Sam said, ane then thought how pointless it was to try to deflect the Abydos-and-Oma discussion with ... tea.

Crap.

O'Neill pointed at the file folder and said, "You sent us on that mission, you know. You appeared to me out of nowhere in an elevator on this very base and told me we needed to intercept Anubis before he could get the last Eye of Ra for himself." Arms folded, he leaned a hip against the table facing Daniel, the picture of benevolent challenge.

Daniel put his cup down. "I've been reading about that, yes."

O'Neill, arms still folded, said, "You don't remember." His voice was neutral. Sam wondered if Daniel could read the pain behind it. The old Daniel would have been able to.

Daniel picked up the cup, turned it, took another sip. He didn't meet O'Neill's eyes. "It's all in the reports."

"Ah," O'Neill said.

"Daniel," Sam said, "from what I've seen, Oma handled the people of Abydos the same way she did you. They are ascended now, like you were. Not dead. Translated into a different energy state. What some people would call a higher plane of existence. You know it fits in with some of the traditional beliefs of the Jaffa."

Teal'c had talked to him. She knew that.

"Anubis tried to ascend," Daniel said, speaking to his cup instead of to the colonel or her.

She nodded. "That's what you told us. That he was able to fool many of the other ascended Ancients, but that some of them recognized his manipulative, evil nature, and sent him halfway back, before he could fully become one of them."

Daniel sighed and shook his head. He stared into his cup another moment, then drained it and set the empty on the table by the file. He picked it up and tapped it. "I want to apologize. I don't know what I was thinking, in my other ... existence, when I told you to trade the Eye of Ra to Anubis in exchange for his promise about Abydos. I guess all we learned is what we should have known already; that Goa'uld can't be trusted." He looked up then, looking as lost and as unmoored as Sam had ever seen him, since the very beginning. He met their eyes in turn. "I'm sorry." And he picked up the file and walked out, head down.

Sam thought the colonel would follow him, but he stayed, arms folded, same posture. He had turned his head, to look after Daniel, but otherwise was as still as a statue.

Sam picked up Daniel's empty cup, and folded her hands around it. It was still warm from the tea.

She said into the silence, "He really doesn't remember."

Jack said, "Yeah. I'm getting that." And he heaved a huge sigh, tapped the table once, and walked out.

Sam sat there a minute, turning the cup in her hands, and then stood, put it in the sink, rinsed it out, and went back to her computer, setting her own cup beside it on the warmer. They'd put a call out to the Tok'ra, over O'Neill's protests. They had to do something about Anubis. For now it was up to her to come up with some sort of basis for a plan. And the night wasn't getting any longer.

She killed the screensaver and opened her notes on naquadriah. But she paused a moment, fingers poised over the keyboard. She knew why the colonel seemed so at a loss. It was hard to accept, that Daniel, who knew so much, who had been such a huge part of their plans, provided the knowledge, the perspective that informed so much of their strategies -- it was so hard to accept that he was back in body, but that, so far anyway, was all. They missed his knowledge, his, well, his wisdome. His unique perspective. Without his memories, he really wasn't himself. He was someone new, not the Daniel they all loved so much. She'd suggested to O'Neill on Vis Uban that his memories could return, given the right circumstances. She clung to that. But for now, tonight, more than ever, she felt the weight of his absence as an increase of her own responsibility. And as a void, a vacancy, that a dozen cups of hot tea couldn't warm.

 _Enough rambling_ , she told herself, _he'll remember, or he won't._ And got back to work.

end.


End file.
